I absolutely hate the new way of uploading receipts. The ability to simply take a photo of the receipt and have Wave OCR it and then go back later to enter details was one of the best parts of Wave. This change may be a deal breaker.
I hope WaveApps is reading these comments. This is a poor solution advertised as an upgrade. It appears to me that this is a business decision that favors the convenience of the business WaveApps and has absolutely nothing to do with the preference of the clients. Message received loud and clear that WaveApps is doing what is best for them not the customer.
This new process is more complicated and took a 2 step process and turned it into a 5 step process.
Old Process:
1) Take photo of receipt at POS
2) Merge with appropriate transaction as they sync
New Process:
1) Save Receipt in Box
2) Ensure transactions sync'd for receipts in the box
3) Take photo
4) Upload to computer
5) Attach to appropriate transaction
This is not easier and does not create the positive behaviors you're platform should be creating. The process deliberately causes receipts to be kept in a box and potentially lost.
I now have a reason to move away to a platform aligned with what my bookkeeper and accountant use rather than force them to use WaveApps.
Just BRUTAL. This is NOT an upgrade. Worst thing ever. I've now had to manually enter in a few purchases and the work flow is way worse now. So many extra steps. I don't use the bank account connect and it was sooooo much easier to just pop things in with my phone and have the ocr input everything. This is a HUGE step back. I don't want to have to go through the hassle of moving into a different accounting solution but honestly this is sooooo bad that I might go through the hassle just to get this one very important feature back. Please reconsider.
Not sure if you are reading the comments below.
This is crystal clear, bring back the old feature.
By not doing so, you are pushing the users out of this platform.
I LOVE THE OLD FEATURE, where I could handle my receipts and expenses! And WHERE are the past receipts I sent that I haven't handled yet? Do I have to start over!?!
Worse thing is that WAVE did this in the middle of the year, so users will either have to suck it up and get through this, or find another platform and start over from SCRATCH!
BRING BACK THE OLD FEATURE...or this will be a dealbreaker for so many!
Sorry to learn that your organization is unable to continue offering OCR and receipt processing. Always suspected that something bad would happen to Wave : it was too good to be true.
So it looks like Wave no longer scans the receipt. Transactions need to be 100% input now and a receipt is just a picture that is added later? How is this better than it was before?
Losing OCR is a pretty big loss. Being able to just email receipts was a huge benefit. Now the process is pretty much terrible. TERRIBLE. Download, click, find, type, click, click click...what a mess. No idea the goal here except maybe to get those old features back we have to pay? Well, one way to get people to pay because those features were amazing and this process is flipping ridiculous.
I was just informed that the previous receipts platform was written with code and in a structure that was so old, adding new features was impossible (A legit reason for updating the platform whether or not we like the direction.). The entire app and receipts feature would need to be rewritten from the ground up to keep, while adding in the new features revolving around POs and other transaction features.
Turns out this receipts update was only 1 of many changes to the transactions features. Some of which are actually valuable.
With that said, I wish Wave was just honest with us about why the change was being made and possibly polled us about our processes. Because the new process flies in the face of Best Practice #3 in the video.
For me, and I believe for many of us, receipts are proof of transactions (not a bank synchronized line item) and adding more time between the purchase and the bookkeeping input just leads to loss, damage, or misplacement of receipts and that proof. (Even team management & accountability around spending.)
Having been part of technology teams and development projects, I understand the difficult decision about how to spend limited resources on new features versus retrofitting legacy ones. Usually more weight is added to future value and revenue of the largest clients, rather than quantity of small. (I hope I'm wrong there.)
In the end this is a case study in customer communication. While emails have been sent for a while, there could have been more overt messaging in the platform. For example:
a notification box at the top of the home dashboard screen or every screen for that matter
a support popup at the bottom with a link to the support pages
Webinars showing all the new features and new receipts process over just publishing a video walkthrough and email
And just this morning they send an email with a video that claims "the new Wave receipts feature makes managing receipts easier than ever!"...REALLY? it's a such a backward step it's ridiculous...just watch this crap :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnt--fjvbuY
This has to be the biggest backwards update I have ever seen! This no longer automates my bookkeeping-I have double (and triple in some cases) the work I had before. Plus, such a fundamental change in the middle of a year?!? As seen by the comments below-you have made a huge mistake with removing this feature and I hope you are hearing your users...if not, I will be forced like many of my fellow commenters to move to another product. Wave was never my first choice for bookkeeping except the receipt upload-the rest of the features are mediocre.
"the new Wave receipts feature makes managing receipts easier than ever!"
Are they kidding?!? They are just trolling us at this point!
Sure, it's so much easier to take 10x more steps to do the same task as we used to be able to do just last week. Instead of having OCR importing the information from the receipts we upload automatically it's so much more fun to spend extra time entering everything manually. Instead of simply forwarding electronic receipts it's so much easier to take a half dozen extra steps to do the same thing (download receipt to device, open & sign into Wave website, go to transactions, create new transaction, enter all your transactions details manually, go to receipts tab, upload receipt stored on device, and save new transaction). That's so much better than just forwarding the receipt, reviewing the details picked up by OCR automatically, and selecting the correct transaction category. IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT 'EASIER THAN EVER"?
I can't believe they spent the time putting out a new video saying that "the new WAVE receipts feature makes managing receipts easier than ever" and that the extra time and effort to use it is just in our heads instead of reading and responding to their users feedback. BRING BACK THE FEATURES WE LOVE!
I dont understand why you would remove the email feature.... Why change something that was SO easy and userfriendly. email receipt are often not in a PDF making it impossible to upload. Ill changing account app only because of that.
So not only have European users been cut loose due to EU banking regs ... it looks like Wave Apps are trying to drive away the rest of their customer base with this insane update? To go through such a convoluted process for every kiss my a** receipt would mean I'd be spending hours inputting tedious data which was not needed until this 'improvement'! Its a no brainer for me as I'll have to find another provider half way through the financial year ... from first look at Zoho books I'm not encouraged as none only half my data seems to be there...?
Got a reply from support, but with all the negative comments, sound like rubbish to me.
Hi David,
Kelly here from Wave - thanks for reaching out.
Thank you as well for the feedback regarding the new receipts workflow. While features such as emailing receipts and the use of OCR worked very well for some users such as yourself, many users also experienced issues with receipts being read incorrectly or not arriving via email. It was a difficult decision to end support for these functions and one we didn't take lightly.
The new Receipts feature is based on customer feedback not just from the Community, but through individual interactions with the Support team such as yours. The feature centres around eliminating duplicates, and allowing customers to attach receipts to existing transactions rather than using receipts to create transactions. At the moment, there aren't any plans to remove the new Receipts feature.
Currently, the option to attach receipts directly to transactions is live. If you head to Accounting > Transactions, you should be able to see a "Receipts" tab if you click on any transaction. You can also create a new transaction from the Dashboard using the "Create a new" button at the top of the page.
While it sounds like you have already checked it out, just in case, I wanted to include this Help Center article about the new feature.
If you have any questions about anything in the article, or about how you can make the new workflow work for you, please let me know and I'm more than happy to assist.
Thanks again for sharing your feedback. Take care,
Kelly
@ste6168 said:
Has anyone found an alternative to the Wave receipts function? One that actually works... This new way is awful, far more time consuming.
There is FORCEIPT. I haven't personally tried it myself yet, but I am seriously considering it unless WAVE comes to their senses in the very near future. Maybe others can chime in with their experiences to let us know.
Below is from my prior post on this forum:
Wanted to let everyone know of a possible alternative: FORCEIPT!
They are offering WAVE users 50% off to switch. They do offer a FREE plan, but to get the same features as you had before (receipt emailing) you'll have to sign up for a paid plan, but even their paid plans are very reasonably priced compared to some of the other options I've seen.
I love that their page even says "Looking for a receipt app that doesn’t quit on you?" Ha! Ha! LOL Nice one!
WAVE App management I know I speak for many others here when I say that I loved your product and really don't want to go, but you are forcing us to look for alternatives. PLEASE reconsider this terrible decision and restore the features we all love.
Don't quite understand how this is an improvement. It's just taken me an hour to do what used to take 10 minutes. And why can I no longer select US$ in the amount field? It just shows CAD and can't be changed.
Time to look for an alternative to Wave I think
@endee said:
Don't quite understand how this is an improvement. It's just taken me an hour to do what used to take 10 minutes. And why can I no longer select US$ in the amount field? It just shows CAD and can't be changed.
Time to look for an alternative to Wave I think
I'd even gladly pay a reasonable monthly fee to have the old OCR feature back
@ste6168 said:
Has anyone found an alternative to the Wave receipts function? One that actually works... This new way is awful, far more time consuming.
There is FORCEIPT. I haven't personally tried it myself yet, but I am seriously considering it unless WAVE comes to their senses in the very near future. Maybe others can chime in with their experiences to let us know.
Below is from my prior post on this forum:
Wanted to let everyone know of a possible alternative: FORCEIPT!
They are offering WAVE users 50% off to switch. They do offer a FREE plan, but to get the same features as you had before (receipt emailing) you'll have to sign up for a paid plan, but even their paid plans are very reasonably priced compared to some of the other options I've seen.
I love that their page even says "Looking for a receipt app that doesn’t quit on you?" Ha! Ha! LOL Nice one!
WAVE App management I know I speak for many others here when I say that I loved your product and really don't want to go, but you are forcing us to look for alternatives. PLEASE reconsider this terrible decision and restore the features we all love.
Thanks. I will sign up for the free plan tomorrow and check it out. I guess in theory I could just track my recepits there, and enter them in Wave as I also rely on Wave for the invoicing function. Overall, Waves reporting features are not that great either, so I will be looking for alternative systems, since I just lost one of the big functions of the software.
I will move away from Wave.
It was the best free accounting software, now it is only e mediocre accounting software which has no hedge towards the competition (free or paid).
You have slowly ruined every cool feature this software had. I am sure there is a reason why the software is going in such direction, but I simply cannot understand why. The only thing I know is that I have to look for a better accounting service.
@xDavidx said:
Got a reply from support, but with all the negative comments, sound like rubbish to me.
Hi David,
Kelly here from Wave - thanks for reaching out.
Thank you as well for the feedback regarding the new receipts workflow. While features such as emailing receipts and the use of OCR worked very well for some users such as yourself, many users also experienced issues with receipts being read incorrectly or not arriving via email. It was a difficult decision to end support for these functions and one we didn't take lightly.
The new Receipts feature is based on customer feedback not just from the Community, but through individual interactions with the Support team such as yours. The feature centres around eliminating duplicates, and allowing customers to attach receipts to existing transactions rather than using receipts to create transactions. At the moment, there aren't any plans to remove the new Receipts feature.
Currently, the option to attach receipts directly to transactions is live. If you head to Accounting > Transactions, you should be able to see a "Receipts" tab if you click on any transaction. You can also create a new transaction from the Dashboard using the "Create a new" button at the top of the page.
While it sounds like you have already checked it out, just in case, I wanted to include this Help Center article about the new feature.
If you have any questions about anything in the article, or about how you can make the new workflow work for you, please let me know and I'm more than happy to assist.
Thanks again for sharing your feedback. Take care,
Kelly
Whereas the ability to attach a receipt directly to a register transaction was requested, it was not requested to remove what was there and working well for thousands of users. This email response is utter BS and I would bet dollars to donuts that there is an ulterior motive behind this decision. I have been a Wave user for 7 years and have recommended to numerous business owners in the past, no more...if they can arbitrarily remove such critical functions from the system despite all the negative comments BEFORE they made this move, I for one am concerned about the sanctity of my accounting & payroll data and will move at the end of the year.
Unbelievable. This is not an upgrade in any form or fashion. You have made it unusable for me.
I have been using this app for over a year and have loved it. Now I can't take a picture of my receipt through the app and have it do all the work of importing it for me through OCR? I will begin looking for a new app today.
Comments
I absolutely hate the new way of uploading receipts. The ability to simply take a photo of the receipt and have Wave OCR it and then go back later to enter details was one of the best parts of Wave. This change may be a deal breaker.
I hope WaveApps is reading these comments. This is a poor solution advertised as an upgrade. It appears to me that this is a business decision that favors the convenience of the business WaveApps and has absolutely nothing to do with the preference of the clients. Message received loud and clear that WaveApps is doing what is best for them not the customer.
This "transition" is a TERRIBLE idea!! You ever hear of the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?!?!
This new process is more complicated and took a 2 step process and turned it into a 5 step process.
Old Process:
1) Take photo of receipt at POS
2) Merge with appropriate transaction as they sync
New Process:
1) Save Receipt in Box
2) Ensure transactions sync'd for receipts in the box
3) Take photo
4) Upload to computer
5) Attach to appropriate transaction
This is not easier and does not create the positive behaviors you're platform should be creating. The process deliberately causes receipts to be kept in a box and potentially lost.
I now have a reason to move away to a platform aligned with what my bookkeeper and accountant use rather than force them to use WaveApps.
Not sure if you are reading the comments below.
This is crystal clear, bring back the old feature.
By not doing so, you are pushing the users out of this platform.
WHAT THE HECK!?! This new feature is HORRENDOUS!
I LOVE THE OLD FEATURE, where I could handle my receipts and expenses! And WHERE are the past receipts I sent that I haven't handled yet? Do I have to start over!?!
Worse thing is that WAVE did this in the middle of the year, so users will either have to suck it up and get through this, or find another platform and start over from SCRATCH!
BRING BACK THE OLD FEATURE...or this will be a dealbreaker for so many!
Sorry to learn that your organization is unable to continue offering OCR and receipt processing. Always suspected that something bad would happen to Wave : it was too good to be true.
So it looks like Wave no longer scans the receipt. Transactions need to be 100% input now and a receipt is just a picture that is added later? How is this better than it was before?
Losing OCR is a pretty big loss. Being able to just email receipts was a huge benefit. Now the process is pretty much terrible. TERRIBLE. Download, click, find, type, click, click click...what a mess. No idea the goal here except maybe to get those old features back we have to pay? Well, one way to get people to pay because those features were amazing and this process is flipping ridiculous.
I was just informed that the previous receipts platform was written with code and in a structure that was so old, adding new features was impossible (A legit reason for updating the platform whether or not we like the direction.). The entire app and receipts feature would need to be rewritten from the ground up to keep, while adding in the new features revolving around POs and other transaction features.
Turns out this receipts update was only 1 of many changes to the transactions features. Some of which are actually valuable.
With that said, I wish Wave was just honest with us about why the change was being made and possibly polled us about our processes. Because the new process flies in the face of Best Practice #3 in the video.
For me, and I believe for many of us, receipts are proof of transactions (not a bank synchronized line item) and adding more time between the purchase and the bookkeeping input just leads to loss, damage, or misplacement of receipts and that proof. (Even team management & accountability around spending.)
Having been part of technology teams and development projects, I understand the difficult decision about how to spend limited resources on new features versus retrofitting legacy ones. Usually more weight is added to future value and revenue of the largest clients, rather than quantity of small. (I hope I'm wrong there.)
In the end this is a case study in customer communication. While emails have been sent for a while, there could have been more overt messaging in the platform. For example:
And just this morning they send an email with a video that claims "the new Wave receipts feature makes managing receipts easier than ever!"...REALLY? it's a such a backward step it's ridiculous...just watch this crap :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnt--fjvbuY
This has to be the biggest backwards update I have ever seen! This no longer automates my bookkeeping-I have double (and triple in some cases) the work I had before. Plus, such a fundamental change in the middle of a year?!? As seen by the comments below-you have made a huge mistake with removing this feature and I hope you are hearing your users...if not, I will be forced like many of my fellow commenters to move to another product. Wave was never my first choice for bookkeeping except the receipt upload-the rest of the features are mediocre.
"the new Wave receipts feature makes managing receipts easier than ever!"
Are they kidding?!? They are just trolling us at this point!
Sure, it's so much easier to take 10x more steps to do the same task as we used to be able to do just last week. Instead of having OCR importing the information from the receipts we upload automatically it's so much more fun to spend extra time entering everything manually. Instead of simply forwarding electronic receipts it's so much easier to take a half dozen extra steps to do the same thing (download receipt to device, open & sign into Wave website, go to transactions, create new transaction, enter all your transactions details manually, go to receipts tab, upload receipt stored on device, and save new transaction). That's so much better than just forwarding the receipt, reviewing the details picked up by OCR automatically, and selecting the correct transaction category. IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT 'EASIER THAN EVER"?
I can't believe they spent the time putting out a new video saying that "the new WAVE receipts feature makes managing receipts easier than ever" and that the extra time and effort to use it is just in our heads instead of reading and responding to their users feedback. BRING BACK THE FEATURES WE LOVE!
I dont understand why you would remove the email feature.... Why change something that was SO easy and userfriendly. email receipt are often not in a PDF making it impossible to upload. Ill changing account app only because of that.
So not only have European users been cut loose due to EU banking regs ... it looks like Wave Apps are trying to drive away the rest of their customer base with this insane update? To go through such a convoluted process for every kiss my a** receipt would mean I'd be spending hours inputting tedious data which was not needed until this 'improvement'! Its a no brainer for me as I'll have to find another provider half way through the financial year ... from first look at Zoho books I'm not encouraged as none only half my data seems to be there...?
Got a reply from support, but with all the negative comments, sound like rubbish to me.
Hi David,
Kelly here from Wave - thanks for reaching out.
Thank you as well for the feedback regarding the new receipts workflow. While features such as emailing receipts and the use of OCR worked very well for some users such as yourself, many users also experienced issues with receipts being read incorrectly or not arriving via email. It was a difficult decision to end support for these functions and one we didn't take lightly.
The new Receipts feature is based on customer feedback not just from the Community, but through individual interactions with the Support team such as yours. The feature centres around eliminating duplicates, and allowing customers to attach receipts to existing transactions rather than using receipts to create transactions. At the moment, there aren't any plans to remove the new Receipts feature.
Currently, the option to attach receipts directly to transactions is live. If you head to Accounting > Transactions, you should be able to see a "Receipts" tab if you click on any transaction. You can also create a new transaction from the Dashboard using the "Create a new" button at the top of the page.
While it sounds like you have already checked it out, just in case, I wanted to include this Help Center article about the new feature.
If you have any questions about anything in the article, or about how you can make the new workflow work for you, please let me know and I'm more than happy to assist.
Thanks again for sharing your feedback. Take care,
Kelly
Has anyone found an alternative to the Wave receipts function? One that actually works... This new way is awful, far more time consuming.
There is FORCEIPT. I haven't personally tried it myself yet, but I am seriously considering it unless WAVE comes to their senses in the very near future. Maybe others can chime in with their experiences to let us know.
Below is from my prior post on this forum:
Wanted to let everyone know of a possible alternative: FORCEIPT!
They are offering WAVE users 50% off to switch. They do offer a FREE plan, but to get the same features as you had before (receipt emailing) you'll have to sign up for a paid plan, but even their paid plans are very reasonably priced compared to some of the other options I've seen.
I love that their page even says "Looking for a receipt app that doesn’t quit on you?" Ha! Ha! LOL Nice one!
https://foreceipt.com/switch
WAVE App management I know I speak for many others here when I say that I loved your product and really don't want to go, but you are forcing us to look for alternatives. PLEASE reconsider this terrible decision and restore the features we all love.
Don't quite understand how this is an improvement. It's just taken me an hour to do what used to take 10 minutes. And why can I no longer select US$ in the amount field? It just shows CAD and can't be changed.
Time to look for an alternative to Wave I think
I'd even gladly pay a reasonable monthly fee to have the old OCR feature back
Thanks. I will sign up for the free plan tomorrow and check it out. I guess in theory I could just track my recepits there, and enter them in Wave as I also rely on Wave for the invoicing function. Overall, Waves reporting features are not that great either, so I will be looking for alternative systems, since I just lost one of the big functions of the software.
Please wave Bring back the OCR receipts feature. I am also happy to pay
I will move away from Wave.
It was the best free accounting software, now it is only e mediocre accounting software which has no hedge towards the competition (free or paid).
You have slowly ruined every cool feature this software had. I am sure there is a reason why the software is going in such direction, but I simply cannot understand why. The only thing I know is that I have to look for a better accounting service.
Whereas the ability to attach a receipt directly to a register transaction was requested, it was not requested to remove what was there and working well for thousands of users. This email response is utter BS and I would bet dollars to donuts that there is an ulterior motive behind this decision. I have been a Wave user for 7 years and have recommended to numerous business owners in the past, no more...if they can arbitrarily remove such critical functions from the system despite all the negative comments BEFORE they made this move, I for one am concerned about the sanctity of my accounting & payroll data and will move at the end of the year.
Why in the world would you get rid of the OCR Image processing? It was one of the reasons I use wave! This is super annoying.
Unbelievable. This is not an upgrade in any form or fashion. You have made it unusable for me.
I have been using this app for over a year and have loved it. Now I can't take a picture of my receipt through the app and have it do all the work of importing it for me through OCR? I will begin looking for a new app today.